I snuck a glance from underneath the table and saw that he’d handed her flowers. Are you kidding me? This isn’t a date!
“These are for you,” he said with a toothy smile.
“Thank you, Merrick, that was so sweet of you. Come in, can I take your jacket?”
“Thank you, yes,” he said and pulled off his jacket and handed it to my mother. My jaw dropped when I saw him fully for the first time. He wasn’t dressed in his usual monk-like wizardry robe. He was wearing a charcoal colored cable knit cardigan sweater with a black shirt underneath it and dark denim trousers. He actually looked the most like a normal person than he ever had before.
Mom put her flowers down on a table and took his jacket and hung it on the coat rack next to the door. “Come in, would you like to sit down?”
Merrick disregarded her offer to sit, and instead stood back just staring at my mother. “Linda, you look just like you did the last day I saw you.”
“Oh, why, thank you.” Mom blushed a deep crimson color and ran a hand through her long auburn hair. I sucked in a deep breath when I noticed the sprinkling of whites seemed to be missing from her long tresses. She’d colored her hair! Those whites had been there at the hospital, hadn’t they? Had she colored her hair just for Merrick’s benefit? I narrowed my eyes and felt a tiny growl welling up inside my throat.
“Can I give you a hug?” he asked, approaching her eagerly.
She nodded ever so slightly. Don’t hug him Mom! I wanted to yell.
His arms opened up and Mom slid into them easily. Their embrace seemed to go on forever. I could tell Merrick didn’t want to let her go; he seemed to hold her tightly even after she’d released him. It was a tender moment between the two of them and it caused me only a moment’s regret for spying on them. I knew I had to, though. Mom needed my help in keeping her wits about her.
After they’d parted, Mom took a seat nervously at a chair and scooted up to the table. “Have a seat,” she said quietly. I worried that touching him had thrown her for a loop.
Merrick sat across the table from her – his eyes drawn to her. “Linda, I don’t even know where to begin.”
My mother smiled sweetly. “I know. It’s hard to wrap my brain around all of this too.”
“How in the world were those girls able to unbind us?” he asked. “I’m one of the most powerful wizards in the world. I’ve tried for years to counteract the binding your mother put on us. But I’ve been unable to do it.”
“You – you tried to undo the spell?” my mother asked, I could hear the emotion thick in her voice.
“For years, Linda. Years and years! I never understood what happened to us.”
“But you found out my mother bound us?”
He shrugged. “I only assumed it was your mother. I went to see you again one sunny day and your house was gone. Just gone. The whole house. There was an empty place where it had been just two days prior.”
“It wasn’t gone. She just hid it from you. In plain sight. It was part of the spell, I’m sure.”
“I know that now. Reign told me it was your mother. I didn’t know where to look for you, and yet everywhere I went, I asked people about you. Some knew you and told me about you, but I could never seem to find you. It was like you were invisible to me.”
“I’m so sorry, Merrick.”
“My heart was broken, Linda. You were the love of my life!”
Mom patted at her cheeks. Tears that hadn’t yet fallen soaked her eyes. “And you were the love of mine,” she assured him.
“You went on with your life, though,” he said, his voice growing quieter.
“I had to,” my mother choked out. “After my mother took Reign away from me, I was devastated. I often thought of ending my life. What was the point? I didn’t have you and I didn’t have my son and I hated my mother. Years of my life were spent in darkness.”
“I have a lot of anger towards her as well. She took away so many things from me. She took you away and she took my son away. I didn’t even know I had a son!”
“I’m so sorry,” my mother whispered.
“I wish I understood why she did it,” Merrick said, letting his head fall into his hands.
“I wish I understood as well. She never even told me.”
He looked up with surprise. “She never explained it to you?”
“No! I’ve lived my entire life not knowing why she would bind me from you and take away my child. Someday I will find out,” my mother assured Merrick. “Until then, I can only take comfort in knowing that I have my son back and now we’re free!”
“Do you know how those girls did it?”
She shook her head. “No. One of the girls is a matchmaker. Perhaps a matchmaker needed to do the spell. Perhaps it was simply that one can’t unbind themselves.”
He nodded knowingly. “I’ve had others do the spell for me. It was the matchmaker – it had to be! I wish I had thought of that years ago. She had to have done the spell, I’m sure that was the missing ingredient. If I had thought of it years ago, things might have been different.”
“You went on with your life, though, you run a school now,” my mother said, batting at the tears that had broken over the dam. “Pretty impressive,” she sniffed.
Merrick pulled a cloth handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to my mother. Then he grimaced. “I’d give it all back if my life had gone down a different path.”
“Maybe it’s the way it was meant to be. I have my Mercy. I never would have had her if we’d stayed together.”
He shrugged lightly. “Perhaps we would have had a daughter as well.”
“Perhaps,” she agreed, her voice barely above a whisper.
The thought of having Merrick for my father suddenly made my urge to doo doo on his shoes stronger. I wiggled around under the table, wishing I could just go bite his ankles or growl at him. I wanted to holler at my mother, Don’t fall for his lines! Instead, I reluctantly held myself back.
After dotting at her eyes with the handkerchief, my mother looked at him curiously. “You changed your last name. You were a Smith when we were dating.”
He nodded. “It was my mother’s decision. Stone is her maiden name. When our father decided to abandon us, she decided we’d take her last name instead of his. After you and I were separated and my father left, I carried a lot of anger inside of me. I was very happy to rid myself of his last name,” he admitted. “So what have you been up to all of these years?” Merrick asked my mother.
She sat back in her chair as her hand found its way back into her hair, where it began to twirl a long strand repetitively. She smiled at him. “You want the whole sordid story?”
He let out a small chuckle. “Sordid? Sounds riveting! Yes, I want to know everything that’s happened since I last laid eyes on you.”
“Well, after we were separated, I cried for months on end. With you gone, my world was shattered and torn apart. And then one morning, I woke up and I felt different. Something wasn’t right, but I had no idea what was happening. So I went to my mother, whom I was still very upset with, mind you. And she took me to the hospital where it was discovered that I was in labor with a baby I didn’t even know that I was carrying! It was shocking, to say the least. Reign was born with a huge head of jet black hair and these big black eyes, he looked so much like you, Merrick,” my mother whispered softly. Her voice caught towards the end of her story and she was unable to speak for a moment. I watched Merrick’s face grow red. I saw a mixture of sadness and fury in his face.
Merrick reached his arm across the table and put his hand on my mother’s. “Linda, I – ,” he began, but couldn’t finish. He didn’t have the words.
“It’s ok, Merrick. I can finish,” she replied, patting his hand gently and pasting a brave smile on her face. “After Reign was born, I was extremely exhausted and my mother said she would take him back to the nursery for me. When I woke up – he was gone. She’d already given him away and because I wasn’t 18 yet, my mothe
r told me that I didn’t have a say in what happened to my son,” she said, finishing the story with a little half-shrug.
Even though I’d heard the story twice now, it still managed to cause my arms to pebble and made me sad to hear. I lowered my soft furry chin to the floor and lay quietly with my butt in the air. Poor Mom.
Mom dotted at her eyes with Merrick’s handkerchief again and sniffed back the rest of her tears. Then she gave a half laugh. “I don’t know why I’m crying about this again, it’s been so many years now!”
“It’s a heavy burden you’ve had to bear. I understand,” he said quietly.
She nodded her head. “I’ve made peace with it,” she said, clearing her throat. “Anyway! So…I ended up graduating high school a year late, due to my crazy mixed up life. I moved to Colorado and got a job in a kitschy little souvenir shop in Fort Collins. I studied magic under the owner – who was a fabulous woman and has been a dear friend of mine over the years.
“Then a few years later I met Mercy’s father while I was working there. He was visiting his family for the summer, he was incredibly handsome – which he was keenly aware of. We spent a month together, getting to know each other, and by the end of the summer, I was in love. Or at least I thought it was love.
“When he moved back to where he came from, I felt like I’d had the wind knocked out of me for the third time in my life and much to his dismay, I decided to follow him. We dated on and off again, mostly off again, for a short while and then I found out I was going to have a baby. And that was it. I never heard from him again. He changed his number and he moved.
“Over the years I’ve heard from various people about him, but at that point, I really didn’t care. He did call me at one point, when Mercy was about 18 months old. He wanted to know if he had a son or a daughter. Then I didn’t hear from him again until Mercy was 12. He contacted me to tell me that he had cancer and was going to be going through treatment. He asked if he could send her some things that belonged to him – just in case he didn’t make it. And that was the last time I heard from him.”
“You don’t know if he is alive or dead?” Merrick asked.
My mother shook her head and looked down at her hands. “No. I feel like he’s still alive. I feel like Mercy and I would know if he were gone – we would have sensed it.”
Merrick let out a deep breath and raised both of his eyebrows. “Wow. Well, I must say, your love life has been better than mine, I assure you,” he said with a little chuckle.
“Oh, you’re saying you can top that happy little story?” my mother asked.
“Most definitely,” he agreed. “Quite simply, I didn’t have a love life after you.”
The deafening silence that followed that admission made me wince. I allowed my little legs to sprawl out around me. Laying flat on the hardwood floor, I covered both eyes with my two furry little paws. Why was this happening? Was this my fault? Should I not have unbound them? I only wanted the curse of being too close to Merrick to stop. I hadn’t wanted them to express their unyielding love for each other! This was maddening! I willed my mother silently to ignore the kindness in his voice. She couldn’t fall for it. She just couldn’t!
“Surely you dated!”
He shook his head. “I poured myself into my magic. I vowed to become even more powerful than I already was. I studied under some of the greats – Arlan Flyinghawk, Shamus Stansbury, and Paul Witherton.”
“Wow,” she marveled. “Very impressive, Merrick.”
“I spent all those years trying to absorb every piece of magic I could. I wanted to figure out how to break the spell,” he admitted. “And to think a couple of dumb girls solved it like nothing!” His tone had changed, it was darker and angrier than it had been.
Dumb girls? I was incensed! His true character had slid through a crack in the shiny veneer he had presented to my mother.
“Merrick, they aren’t dumb girls! One of them is my daughter and one of them your own niece!” My mother had taken offense. I heard it in her voice.
He cleared his throat and gave her a tight smile. “Of course Linda, I didn’t mean it like it came out. I just meant that I’d been studying for so long and they are so new at working magic…”
“Sometimes it just takes an outside perspective to solve a problem,” she interjected before he could continue putting his foot in his mouth.
“Yes, yes, of course,” he stuttered nervously.
I wanted to cheer for my mother. She hadn’t just let him off the hook easily and now I got to watch him squirming in his seat. Lucky for him, there was a knock at the door.
He looked at my mother curiously. “You’re not open for business yet, are you?”
My mother shook her head and stood up. “No, our grand re-opening is on Halloween.”
Merrick stood up as well. “Are you expecting someone?”
“I’m not expecting anyone, but it could be Reign or Mercy, I suppose. Checking in on us.” She opened the door. “Detective Whitman!” I heard her exclaim. “What a pleasant surprise. Come in.”
Oh boy! Things were about to get good. I hunkered down under the table, wiggling my rump excitedly.
{ Chapter Fourteen}
“These are for the patient,” said Detective Whitman, and immediately my little doggie nose caught the scent of another set of perfumed flowers.
“Oh, what a darling you are!” she gushed. “Come in, come in.”
They stepped forward into the dining area and as soon as Detective Whitman looked up, he caught site of Merrick.
My mother began nervously wringing her hands in front of her. “You two know each other, right? No need for introductions I assume.”
Detective Whitman instinctively placed his body in front of my mother’s like a shield. “What are you doing here, Stone?”
Merrick furrowed his eyebrows at the detective. “I was just about to ask you the same question.”
“I’m making sure that Linda is alright. Someone played a dangerous practical joke on her last night, as I’m sure you are aware. She was nearly killed.”
Merrick’s gaze switched from Detective Whitman to my mother. “Linda, what happened?”
“Oh, you know very well what happened,” Detective Whitman shot out angrily.
Mom reached out and touched Detective Whitman’s arm softly. “Detective, I really don’t think…”
“Linda, are your children here?” he asked looking around the restaurant.
She smiled softly. “No, they are giving me a bit of privacy.”
Detective Whitman’s eyes widened. “They left you alone with him? After everything that’s happened? I don’t think you should be alone with him. He’s dangerous.”
“Now wait just a minute, Detective. That’s incredibly pompous of you to make such a radical statement. I pose no harm to Linda.”
Detective Whitman held my mother back behind him with one hand while his other hand waved a finger in Merrick’s face. “You need to leave. This poor woman has been through enough.”
“I will not! How dare you interrupt our private meeting!”
Detective Whitman didn’t back down from Merrick’s evil glare. “Linda. You’re being naïve if you think that Merrick Stone is harmless. I have a strong suspicion that he is involved in the Ronnie Edwards murder case I’m investigating. I also think that he has something to do with last night’s little ‘accident’ out front of the building.”
“What accident? I don’t even know what you’re talking about!” he insisted angrily, looking around Detective Whitman to speak to my mother. “Linda, you’ve got to believe me. I have no involvement in any of that.”
My mother tried to speak, but Detective Whitman’s voice boomed over hers. “You should go.”
“I will not! I am Linda’s guest. When she wants me to go, she’ll ask me to go.”
“Linda, tell this clown you don’t want him hanging around you,” Detective Whitman insisted.
He stepped away, exposing my mother to
Merrick’s intense scrutiny. “Well…I – uh. I really don’t know what to think!”
“Do you think that he’s involved in the weird things that have been happening to you?”
My mother twirled her hair anxiously as she carefully considered her answer to Detective Whitman’s question. “I think at the very least, it’s possible that the weird things are happening as a result of our proximity and the binding spell my mother placed on us.”
Merrick nodded, working hard to keep his anger in check in front of my mother. “I suppose us being too close to each other could cause strange things to happen,” he answered stiffly through a clenched jaw.
“Or, more likely, you were trying to scare Linda off – send her back to where she came from!” the detective suggested.
Merrick ran a hand through his hair. “And why exactly would I do that?”
“A better question is, why did you kill Ronnie Edwards?”
“I didn’t kill Ronnie Edwards!” Merrick shouted.
“Of course you didn’t, you were just the last one seen threatening the boy,” Detective Whitman retorted, shifting his weight back onto his heels.
“Linda. Tell me that you know I would never intentionally harm you!”
My mother smiled at Merrick softly. “I know, Merrick. Detective Whitman and others aren’t so sure. Merrick, maybe today isn’t the best day for us to catch up. Perhaps we can talk another time?”
Detective Whitman’s chest puffed out at her words. “You heard the lady, Stone.”
“Linda, are you kidding me? It’s this guy who should go, not me! I promise you. I’d never hurt you.”
My mother began ushering Merrick towards the door. “I understand, Merrick. I just think we’re not going to get anywhere else today. Things are just too complicated right now. We’ll talk again soon, alright?”
Witch Degrees of Separation: A Witch Squad Cozy Mystery #3 Page 12